 Hi you guys! So it is National Teacher Appreciation Week this week and the official Teacher Appreciation Day is tomorrow. So I thought I would share with you a quick tutorial for a little gift that you can get the teachers in your life. Obviously if you have kids, you know, they have teachers at school and with their extracurricular activities. But as an adult, I feel like I have lots of teachers in my life as well. Mentors and people that kind of help guide me. So I am going to be using this week to pay homage to all of those people as well. So the tutorial that I have for you today is for these really adorable bow keypobs. This idea actually comes from Bev at Flamingo Toes. This is her tutorial that I'm sharing with you today. The keypob itself takes hardly any fabric at all. Does this fabric look familiar? I have a matching keypob to my dress here today. So it doesn't take hardly any fabric which is a great thing because you probably have what you need on hand. The only thing that you probably don't have is this keypob hardware. It is easy to find or it was for me anyways. I saw some at my Joann's. But if you have Amazon Prime, I'm going to link an Amazon link down below where you can get these. So let's learn how to make these. Okay, so here is everything that you're going to need to make these keypobs. You are going to need your pattern pieces and I've just made these out of some cardstock. I'll leave the measurements in the description box below. But for the main piece of fabric, you need one that's three inches by ten inches. And for the interfacing, you need one that's two inches by ten inches. You're also going to need some kind of measuring tools. So I've got this hem gauge here and I've got my Omnigrid ruler here. You'll need a marking tool. You'll need a pair of tweezers to make that little bow. You'll need some kind of clip. You'll see why later I suppose. You need bias tape, something that's either matching or coordinating with your fabric. And then you'll need a Taylor's clapper in order to get that fold nice and crisp. And then you'll need one of these kits. So this is going to be the hardware. It's called Keyfob Hardware. I'll have a link down below for where I got these. But they come in different widths and also different finishes. So this one is silver, but they also have like antique bronze and things like that. And this is the tool that you use to close it down. You could use regular pliers. So if you don't have one of these, go ahead and grab your regular pliers. Okay, once you've gathered all of your supplies, your first step is going to be to cut out the interfacing and the fabric that you are going to use using the dimensions that I mentioned earlier. Again, they are also listed in the description box if you need to find them. This is fusible fleece. It is similar to other kinds of interfacing that you've used in that it has the little glue dots on the backside of it. But the rest of it is kind of like batting, I guess, in a way. Or, you know, if you're familiar with what fleece is. But that is what it looks like. And you want to use this because you want it to kind of be soft and cushiony whenever you're done. But basically, you just line up the interfacing, centering it along the width of the fabric. And it's going to be the same length. So those the length of the interfacing will match up with the raw edges of the fabric. But you just lay the glue dots on the wrong side of the fabric. And you get your iron nice and hot and get some steam going. And you just press your iron on to the backside of the fusible fleece, holding it there for like three to five seconds. And then picking up your iron and moving it, not moving your iron across it like this. And you just get it on there nice and good. And you can see it's completely adhered to the fabric. Another really good tip. I think Abby's probably mentioned this before. But, you know, after you're done pressing your fusible fleece, just let the fabric sit on the ironing board until it's completely cooled. And that'll help the glue dots kind of adhere to the fabric as well. Okay, so you've got your interfacing attached to the back of your fabric. And now you're going to fold the ends, the long ends of the fabric over the fusible fleece by about half an inch. You want to kind of just fold the fabric over the interfacing. And you want to press in those sides really good so that you get something with kind of folded over edges on this side. So once you've folded in each of the long edges, then you're going to fold the whole thing in on itself. So here's what's the last step. And then you fold this whole thing in on itself so that you've got kind of a little bit of a book, I guess. And you want to press this really well. And this is where the tailor's clapper comes in. So once you fold this over and you get your iron and your steam going really good, lay the tailor's clapper on it and again, let it completely cool while sitting on your ironing board. And that's how you will get these really nice crisp folds in your fabric. You're also going to need a piece of bias tape. You can either use purchased bias tape or you can make your own. I've used, this is the double fold quarter inch bias tape, but I've used half inch before. But you are going to want the double fold so that it does have like a finished side on a finished edge on each side. But this needs to be about seven and a half inches long. And this is what we're going to use to make our cute little bow. Here we are with our prepared strip of fabric. And then I've taken the bias tape and I've cut it into three sections. You're going to need a one inch piece, a two and a half inch piece and a four inch piece. Again, I'll leave these dimensions in the description box so that you can easily reference them. But you're going to leave the four inch piece alone. You're going to take the two and a half inch piece. And what I like to do is I like to fold it in half and just finger press it right there so that you can kind of get an idea of where the center is. And then you're going to fold in each of the edges overlapping that center fold that you just made by about a quarter of an inch. And you're going to hold those there. The whole point is to try and get this main part of the bow to be about an inch wide. You're going to put this into your sewing machine. And I like to put it in this way and just do a wide zigzag stitch that doesn't travel, just kind of tacking these, all sandwiching all three of these layers together. And then you're also going to take your one inch piece and you're going to fold it over itself. And you're going to sew a very narrow maybe quarter of an inch on sewing the raw edges of this one inch piece together. And when you do that, you will get these pieces here. So you'll see I just kind of tacked that. So now I have this bow piece. And then this is what becomes the center part of your bow. Okay, so then you're going to want to take your bow piece and just line it up on the edge there and fold it over itself just to make like a little bit of a sandwich so that you can get this center bow piece over both of those pieces, the four inch piece and the bow piece. And then you take your tweezers and you kind of wiggle them into the side of the center bow and you pull everything through. And being very gentle so you don't lose any of your pieces, I've definitely pulled everything too quickly before. And you just kind of play with it until you can wiggle everything down to this one and a half inch mark like so. And then you just play with it to make it nice and pretty. Might take a little bit of time, but you'll get it until you get a little cute little bow with a band that looks like this. Okay, so here we have a prepared bow. This is actually, just for reference, this is the half inch double fold bias tape. And this is the single fold. Let me get it just so you can see the difference here. I'll put it down on the key fob so you can see the differences there. So you have kind of a littler one and then a bigger one. It just, I guess it comes down to personal preference, whatever you like better, a bigger bow or a smaller bow. But anyways, so the next step is to place, is to take your marking tool and measure down one and a half inches from the raw edge of one edge. Now this, wherever you mark, that's going to be the top edge of the key fob and the folded edge here. So if you think that this side is prettier and you want that to be your front, you'll want to mark over there or, I don't know, if you think that one edge or one side is prettier and needs to be the right side, go ahead and determine that now. But you mark one and a half inches down. Also, this is going to make a five inch key fob, which can be kind of long. I don't know. I guess it's personal preference. So if you wanted to make a shorter one, you totally can. But you're going to adjust where you mark or where you place the bow. So let's say you were going to make, I don't know, a three inch key fob like this. You would want the bow to still be in the top third of the entire length of the key fob. So you would mark down maybe only one inch or one and a quarter inch. You maybe just even eyeball it. But so go ahead and adjust the length of the key fob now before you place your bow. Otherwise, when you're finished, the bow could end up in an awkward place and it won't be as cute. But for a five inch key fob and for all the measurements we've had today, measure down one and a half inches and then place your bow over that dot that you made. And you're going to tuck the ends of this little flag into the open book end of the key fob. So you wrap this side around the other end and then tuck it in. So what you end up with is the ends of the bias tape being tucked in to the open edge of the key fob. And play around with it so you can get the bow nice and centered. And then when you do that, hold it nice and tight, keep the bow out of the way and use your alligator clip to hold all of that nice and tight. So you can see I'm off my mark so I need to move everything up a little bit. There we go. Get this edge tucked in and hold it together with the alligator clip like so. And the next step is going to be to sew at a quarter of an inch all the way down this edge, which will end up closing this completely. It'll close it all together and it'll also sew the bow in place. But make sure to keep this part of the bow out of the way when you're sewing. So just fold that over and sew all the way down here. Turn at the bottom and then you're also going to top stitch along the folded edge just to provide some kind of symmetry. So sew all the way down this edge, pivot at the bottom, and then sew back up and top stitch the folded edge, again making sure to keep that little bow out of the way. Okay, so here I have a completely sewn closed key fob. The little bow is attached there and it's top stitched along the folded side. You're going to fold it in half so that the raw edges meet. Feel free to press that if you want. And then to use the key fob hardware, you just want to take, there's a wrong side that has two little triangles in it and a right side that has, it's very plain. So you want to make sure that the right side is on the bow. And you literally just position that over the raw edges of the key fob. And then you take your pliers. Now, if you're using regular pliers from the hardware store, make sure to put some felt or something over the edges. This has like a rubber, I don't know, casing put on top of it just to prevent any denting or anything messing up the actual hardware. But you just take the clamp and you position it close to the edge and carefully clamp down on it. Just keep pressing and get it really nice and tight on there. And there you have your finished key fob. Now the key fob hardware also comes with a ring, so you want to put the ring on the key ring on the edge of the key fob, like so. And then you will have a really cute and adorable handmade key fob. So there you have it. That's how easy it is to make one of these adorable bow key fobs. I really hope that you will be able to make some of these for the teachers in your life. But obviously this is a great gift even outside of teacher appreciation week. So hopefully you'll use this tutorial and make someone in your life really happy. Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time.